The logical positivists said that a sentence has a meaning only in so far as it is possible to define whether it is true or false. It is important here to maintain the distinction between a false and a meaningless sentence. If, for instance, I say "Next year Christmas Eve falls on 27 December", the sentence is false but not meaningless. I can demonstrate that it is false merely by looking at the calendar or from my knowledge that Christmas Eve automatically falls on 24 December every year. If, on the other hand, I say "The soul is a substance", I have in fact said nothing at all. The sentence is neither true nor false. It is meaningless, for I cannot possibly prove or disprove it.
Here the task of philosophy was seen as the rationalization of language and philosophers suggested the idea of a unified language, that is, a language structured in such a way that everyone could use and understand it. Such a rationalized language may consist only of two types of words: (a) words referring to things which can be observed, and (b) words referring to the relationship of these words to one another; that is to say, words such as 'and', 'or', 'not', and so forth.
Rationalized language might be clear and exact, but it would clearly, as B. Russell once said, be a language unsuitable for poetry. His objection was more profound than he realized at the time, since this is what linguistic philosophy has in fact now achieved: language as a means of communication without any significance in itself. Thus, concerning the relationship between language and reality, linguistic philosophy has made reality the primary interest and reduced language to a mere means.
It is possible, however, to adopt the opposite point of view. Language may well be a means to transmit something to others, a means to establish contact with them, to communicate. But at the same time it is itself a product of civilization, alongside other products such as art, science, politics, morals, and so on. It has its own character and its own structure. Through language the patterns of culture is expressed. We can even go a step further and say that language is the fundamental creation of civilization since it is through language that men are able to communicate all cultural achievements.
This is not easy to grasp at first sight. The case is not that man first realizes something or other, or is struck by a thought or has an idea independently of language, and then, in order to communicate it to others, dresses it up in language, or translates it, so to speak, into the words and forms of language. The realization, the thought, the idea are themselves something linguistic, since it is the structure of language which directs the thought and shapes the idea. Human beings, indeed, become themselves through language.
Language is therefore of primary importance, and it is wrong first to assume the non-linguistic phenomena as things or ideas, and then to add language as a kind of clothing. In our world all phenomena are in themselves linguistic since they are revealed to us through language. Language is much more than a means of communication since it cannot be separated from the world which it communicates.
Consequently it is a mistake to maintain that language is imprecise and vague. On the contrary, it is immediately clear, at least when it is used for what it is: the fundamental creation of civilization through which we established contact with each other in the world. It is possible to deceive people by means of language, through lying or irony, but this can be done only because language itself is supposed to be immediately understandable. Language becomes imprecise or vague only when used as something it is not. It will be discovered that the individual word, which has so many meanings, is imprecise when not found in a definite context. On the other hand, when the word is used in a sentence, and the sentence is used in a definite situation by one person to another, then the word is absolutely precise and clear. It is the sentence which has a precise meaning, and on the basis of it, individual words making up the sentence take on their own precision.
When a child learns a language, it means the child is getting to know itself and its world. The child does not come to language from the outside, learning the grammar and mastering the vocabulary. The child learns the language through play; it grows up in it and discovers it at the same rate as it discovers the world. In growing up, language and culture thus become one and the same thing. Other languages may be learned later in life, but never in the same Way. Foreign languages are learned from the outside, and never become part of the learner; they have to be learned slowly through the grammar, word order and vocabulary. It is possible to become very familiar with a foreign language and to speak it fluently, but only in rare cases can it become' one's own language. If one does make a foreign language one's own, one becomes, culturally, a different person.
From this view of the cultural significance of language, it is only a short step to thinking of language as itself a source of knowledge. To understand who we are, to become aware of our view of life, of the way in which to associate with other people, and of the goals we set ourselves, we must listen to language itself. Culture is revealed in language.
G. Moore expresses this by saying that there is a form of knowledge which cannot be questioned. For instance, he knows that he has a body which is his, that it has existed for a certain space of time, that it has always been fairly close to the surface of the earth and at a certain distance from other things, and he also knows there are other people who have similar experience in respect to their bodies. Sentences of this quite ordinary sort express the fundamental and unquestionable knowledge upon which we all base our actions and with which all other sentences must be in agreement if they are to be true. We need not prove that the fundamental sentences are true, for the language we use in speaking to each other, and which we understand without further trouble, is based on their being true.
In his later philosophy L. Wittgenstein adopted the view that language is a game. It can be compared to a ball, with which you can play all sorts of different games, each game having its own rules which the players must keep if there is going to be any game at all: Anyone watching a ball game without knowing the rules will not understand it, just as it is impossible to understand a single word in listening to a language we have never learned. Our life thus have developed a rich variety of linguistic games. It is never possible to say what a word means in the abstract, since the meaning depends on which linguistic game is being played. The word 'jam' in the abstract means only 'jam'; but if ! go into a grocer's shop and say 'jam', the word is used in a linguistic game. It has now become a sign to the shopkeeper that I would like to buy a pot of jam, and the shopkeeper understands this perfectly. He will take a pot of jam, wrap it up and give it to me. But this is not all implied by the one word 'jam': it is implied by the situation and the game we are playing with the language in a specific situation.
To understand a language is here the same as being able to use it in a linguistic game and to understand what someone else says is the same as being able to react in the right way. It is in language and the games associated with it that we have the sense of being alive. We know this from our own experience. If we are with a group of people who belong to a different branch of trade or to a different cultural background from our own, we do not always know what they are talking about, even if they say they are speaking English. We cannot take part in their game; we do not know the rules and cannot use the language in the way they are using it.
In this context the interesting suggestion has been made that philosophical problems arise only when language gets into difficulties. The philosophical problem is like an illness, a kind of disorder in the language. Something has gone wrong, and the language does not work properly. The philosophical examination therefore becomes something comparable to medical care. It seeks to remove the cause of the difficulty and, if this is successfully done, the philosophical problem has at least disappeared, even if it has not been solved.
logical positivists 論理実証主義者
Bertrand Russell 英国の数学者・哲学者
George Moore 英国の哲学者
Ludwig Wittgenstein オーストリア生まれの哲学者